


Verdant Dreams

by onnari



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dedue Rarepair 2020, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:26:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27561469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnari/pseuds/onnari
Summary: A dream is not unlike a seed, planted and then tended to through the years.
Relationships: Dedue Molinaro/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	Verdant Dreams

After Enbarr, it rains.

The land sighs and shudders, realizing the ending of a drought. Slick and muddy grow the roads, Dedue’s path made all the more laborious, but the vegetation and the crops along the fields are eager for the downpour, even as the streams threaten to overflow.

Dedue does not set out to make it back to the monastery, trailing the detritus of painful memories that might be better burned or swept away. Still, at an intersection without any guiding destination or purpose—no sun to reach towards—Dedue finds himself standing in Garreg Mach once more.

It’s in the greenhouse that he takes cover, crossing the threshold for the first time in five years. A place of solace he expects to find little comfort in now, so much of the monastery still lying in rubble. Why should there be any trace of what he’d once devoted his time to when so much has already gone and withered in Dedue’s life?

Life, he knows, can be a very tenuous thing.

In that greenhouse though it is grasping and indomitable—some of the plants he’d once tended alive and pushing out of the soil. He sinks to his knees to peer closer, smelling their faint aroma, almost sweet.

A breeze comes from the open door and a voice follows with it.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Claude asks, “that they could survive on their own for so long? I couldn’t believe it when I found them.”

“It is a wonder,” Dedue agrees, staring down at the flowerbed.

“Dedue, where are you headed?” Claude asks, and in the silence he meets, he only tries again, just as persistent as Dedue remembers. “Are you here to join us? To stay?”

But Claude von Riegan, leader of the Alliance, is not the same person who had once approached Dedue during their days as students. There had been a kindness to him even then, yes, but first and foremost had been all his diversions and pretenses. His attempts to lighten Dedue’s demeanor and learn of his experiences, even as he had a guardedness that he would never give up.

He stands before Dedue openly now, water streaming down his face. His clothes and hair entirely bedraggled.

Claude’s voice goes softer, nearly lost in the hush of rainwater. “There’s a place for you here, I promise.”

“People have been talking,” Dedue says at last. “That you plan to open the borders. To bring people from all over together.”

“For once, people are telling the truth.”

Carefully, Dedue grasps a daffodil’s petal as it slumps over the soil bed. Leans down to inspect the tangle of its stem more closely.

“I nearly drowned that one,” Claude admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not my finest moment.”

It is not hard to imagine, Claude often lively and indulgent in his actions and attentions. Even now, Claude is already there as Dedue makes to stand, hand outstretched.

The rain clatters on the greenhouse’s roof, pooling its way through the door and underneath the cracks in the ceiling, and Dedue thinks of the sodden land. Of all that may be nearly drowning.

But sometimes when you are wanting, any nourishment, even an excess, will do. To know you are not completely forgotten and forsaken.

“It will be alright somehow,” Dedue believes, and he takes the hand that is extended towards him.

* * *

In the battles that are left, Dedue at least knows how he can contribute, his existence a thing he’s always thought expendable. But Claude, with so much life to give, expects life in return.

“I won’t stop you from leading on the frontlines,” he says when Dedue volunteers for it, “but I didn’t ask you to stay just for you to throw your life away. I want to see us both in a world on the other side of this.”

What he means is a society where different cultures and peoples are able to coexist in peace. A world that recognizes Duscur again. And in the moments they cross paths Claude has his questions, wanting to learn more of what Dedue can share of Duscur and its history.

These days his attempts at conversation are less one-sided, both in Dedue’s responses and in what Claude begins to share in return. He struggles still to broach certain topics, but Dedue lends him a patient and steadfast ear, and he is straightforward enough to cut through any of Claude’s obliqueness when the situation calls for it.

He faces down the question of his future with the same directness, wondering more with each passing day how Duscur might establish its independence again in the world Claude is working towards. Becoming more certain he will find his way back to his homeland.

“There is not much,” Dedue eventually responds to Claude’s inquiries when the fighting is at an end. “But I can show you what’s left.”

By wyvern they fly over the remains of buildings and settlements, too difficult to dwell on. Instead they land in Duscur’s heartland, but even there tragedy has made its mark, plains once full of harvest now fallen to waste.

Kneeling in the barren dirt, Dedue sifts the soil through his hands. “It’s fertile,” he pronounces. “Things could regrow here.”

In the breeze, the soil scatters, and Dedue thinks of the seeds they can plant. Of those that travel by the wind, settling in places beyond even his wildest expectations. That is the feeling he has, standing there together. About to go their separate ways but at home in the wind.

“I have no doubt you can grow anything,” Claude says, a little breathless in wonder and again, Dedue wants to believe. That is Claude’s gift, making his dreams—and Dedue’s own growing one—seem so attainable.

“I can’t wait to see it,” Claude encourages and when he looks to Dedue all he can see in the vivid green of his eyes is life and possibility.

* * *

The reality of the work is far harder than the dreaming. First, tracking down survivors from Duscur and seeing who will return and build again. Then the ire of those in Faerghus who do not wish to let go of their claim on the land. The basic considerations of shelter and infrastructure already seem impossible, let alone more complex state matters.

But Dedue already knows who to turn to when his dream seems liable to wither, and Claude’s responses are always swifter than even Dedue allows himself to hope. They are lively letters full of everything from advice to commiseration to reading recommendations on governance. Interspersed are anecdotes as well, clearly designed to make Dedue laugh, and he does so on more than one occasion, startled by the sound of it in the quiet he keeps. And somehow he begins to wish that Claude were there to help him fill it.

“Come here,” Claude invites instead when Dedue is at his lowest, and he signs it with his given name. “Rest for a moment. We’ll dream and plan and scheme.”

Considering the invitation, Dedue tells his heart to settle. He knows he is not special. Claude has invited many others to Almyra. But he also knows it is an offer meant in earnest. That Khalid wants him there and that there is a larger dream they share that needs tending to.

When a proposed council, months in the making, falls through, Dedue’s choice comes to a head.

“You should know I do not scheme,” he replies, even as he packs his belongings.

Khalid has Dedue’s letter in his hand when he comes out to greet him. “Good thing you have me to scheme for you.”

Khalid is in the middle of his own power struggles, his time precious, but still he carves out moments for just the two of them. Many they spend outside, often under one old walnut tree in particular. Feasting on its abundance, nourished, they talk of how to see their dreams through.

And as the sunlight streams through the canopy of leaves, Dedue knows a sentiment is taking root in his chest. That it might bloom if given the right circumstances and conditions.

It’s seeds that he also gives as he leaves, taking Khalid’s hand and placing a small satchel delicately in his open palm. “Native plants from Duscur,” he explains. “You can plant them in Almyra.”

Khalid laughs, a little embarrassed. “I’ll have to get some help to make sure I don’t ruin them. They’re too precious to go to waste.”

Dedue’s laughs himself, as deep and as resonant as the earth. “If you’d like. I will also send advice.”

Khalid leans up and plants a kiss of farewell on Dedue’s cheek, lingering, and Dedue lets himself turn to properly meet him, the both of them unsure of what it could ever grow into.

But even across the distance the letters and the companionship continues, and when Dedue visits next in the dead of Duscur winter, he sees the flowers of home, alive and well in Almyran soil. He has to pause to admire the sight, overcome with unexpected emotion. To think a piece of home could travel so far and that it is partly of his own making.

Still, life does not come without death, and Dedue’s favorite tree—the one he and Khalid had retreated under so often—comes to die, its bark preyed upon by pests. In mourning he runs a hand over its trunk.

From behind Khalid wraps his arms around Dedue’s waist.

“Even if it’s dead, it can still live on. It is great wood for building, or—” His arms tighten. “We can turn it into pulp to make paper. I’d send it all off to you in the letters I write.”

Together they chop down the tree and pull out its roots, but they do not completely fill the hole left behind in the earth. There, Khalid plants a walnut tree in the old one’s place, declaring even he can look after a tree.

* * *

Dedue understands the cyclical nature of life. For hope to be followed by despair, for love to meet loss. The growing season to concede to gaunt periods of want, so much vegetation dying off.

There is beauty in that which only blooms for a short period, but more than anything Dedue wants to grow something perennial that will last through the days and the months and the years. Some piece of life that may even outlast him.

With that hope in mind, Dedue takes his own seeds from Almyra back to Duscur, and his life delineates into new seasons.

The spring and the fall when they are apart but change is upon them, working earnestly. The warmer winter in Almyra and the high summer when Khalid comes by wyvern, the Duscur landscape something to behold from the sky. The settlements Dedue has helped build standing amidst cultivated fields and wildflowers.

The sight of it makes Dedue’s decision to spend more of the year with Khalid an easier one, but it is still work that takes him to Almyra, strengthening diplomatic ties and increasing Duscur’s international presence.

Almyra’s borders thrown open, Dedue takes comfort in knowing he is just one of many who make the journey. There is song and dress and language from all over, immigrants bringing their cultures with them, but Dedue relishes the food most of all, appreciating the range of cuisines and ingredients to try.

As Khalid’s walnut tree finally bears fruit, so too do Dedue’s own culinary ideas. From the tree’s shoots he pulls the harvest, crushing the shells alongside Khalid, dreaming of a meal that could bridge the countries their lives have spanned.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't be the only one who was like how on earth did those plants survive 5 years in the greenhouse?? But then such is the power of Dedue's tender love and care.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/_onnari)


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